Happy Tuesday, friends! This newsletter, which I try to get to you faithfully on Mondays simply was literally hacked yesterday. I spent most of the day dealing with :

a) coming to terms with the fact I had been hacked

b) coming to terms with the fact that the universe seemed to be giving me one final big push toward what I'd been avoiding for a while - getting a new laptop.

While I want to talk briefly about deprioritizing work and how this idea can help us find a better balance between work and life, this post will also be an in memoriam to my laptop(2019-2023).

That laptop saw me through graduating during a pandemic in my childhood bedroom, filling out patient charts, taking exams remotely, completing a year of graduate school( why can't I find the notes on our lecture on Duchenne's disease?!! I have 5 minutes left in this exam!), doing yoga teacher training and joining a virtual meditation group, beginning my writing career, and well ... here we are.

It lived through the study-in-a-too-crowded-coffee-shop years, the study-alone-in-my-apartment years, and the why-am-I-always-on-Zoom years.

It deserves a sendoff. Particularly because of the copious amounts of laptop stickers that were my attempt to identify who I was in a time when I had NO clue who I was.

Deprioritzing Work

First, let's chat about what I mean by deprioritizing work. I, as someone who passionately loves her work, tend to fall into two camps most of the year:

1) I love this so much and I want to do extra, more, and better. I am going to overachieve so hard at being a freelance writer!

2) Why does anyone work? What's the point?

"Deprioritizing work" is my healthy middle. I think some people do this naturally, and I'm really happy for them that they come by that type of cool demeanor by birthright. I, however, do not, and my sense is that many creatives and many of us who were raised to live to work rather than work to live do not, either.

If you have trouble letting go of work at the end of the day, leaving work in the office, or allow thoughts about a conversation you had or an ongoing project to creep in at night, I relate.

When I throw myself into something, I tend to do it with my whole heart.

My approach to deprioritizing work is pretty simple: I recognize that nothing is as important as my peace of mind or the pervasiveness of my values throughout every aspect of my life. So if I need to move on from a client out of love for myself, then that's important. I also recognize that nothing work-related - and in fact, hardly anything at all - is a be-all, end-all situation.

Whatever project or conversation you're working on will still be there. If someone's mad at you in your inbox after 5 on a Friday, that will still be there on Monday. Nothing is too urgent that it needs to be answered right away.

You're probably going, duh! How long did it take you to figure that out?

I want to point to a caveat here, which is that knowing these truths and actually being able to live them are two very different realities.

It's easy to say, yes, nothing is as important as my peace of mind. Yes, everything can wait until the next work day.

However, when we're raised in a culture that constantly reaffirms our worth is determined by our work - and those supervising it- rather than our existence, it becomes incredibly hard to actually step back and get perspective.

I've found that believing in myself and my own capabilities and showing myself compassion have helped me put work, dare I say, second. Second to activities I enjoy, to my family time, and to relaxation time - often in the middle of the day. It's fantastic and the quality of my work hasn't suffered. Work has actually become more fun and I've watched myself grow.

Work still matters - just not as much. So that's my big secret. I imagine for a lot of us, this ability to make our work lives or school lives - those that often demand so much from us and give so little back- actually second fiddle comes with wisdom, age, and even experience where putting work first cost us something dear.

Personally speaking, I'm grateful I've pushed myself to return to the work of unlearning the hustle, of not normalizing the "grind", and of believing in myself to the point that I'm learning how to put what truly matters first when I'm 25. Not when I'm 75, and not when I'm dead.

I hope more and more of us learn to do the same. The secret is that there is no big secret to work-life balance. We have to decide what matters to us and go from there.

The most important thing is remembering the most important thing.

In Loving Memory of My Laptop Dearest: A Retrospective in Stickers

Okay, now for the fun bits. Let's remember my laptop - carrier of my dreams, my words - through the image she projected to the world every time I opened her.

"Worship Coffee, the Dark Lord"

"Keep Calm and Toma Mate"

I bought this trying to cling to my time in Argentina. A reminder to myself. An announcement to the world.

"Cool, Cool, Cool, Cool, Cool, No doubt, No doubt, No doubt, No doubt"

This is a classic Brooklyn 99 quote. I have watched the whole show twice, first in college.

"We lose ourselves in books; We find ourselves there too"

"Home is where the Wawa is"

Philly!

It's Not Feminism if It's Not Intersectional"

"Empowered Women Empower Women"

"Drexel University EMS"

Those were the days, and so are these. Now, I'm making a freelance writing career for myself, and I also have a much more rooted sense of self. I will not be announcing to the world that I'm a coffee-addicted, Wawa-loving, slightly-scared-of-responsibility hybrid adult, book lover, Argentine maven EMT via my computer anymore.

My EMT license is expired and I'm actually not that scared of being an adult anymore. As my readers and I discussed recently, we're never really done growing up, whether it's because we're always learning or because we rue the day we lose our childlike sense of joy and wonder. And I, for one, bought my own computer!

Big steps, reader.

As I'm grateful to my humble laptop for escorting me on the journey, so am I grateful to all of you for riding along with me.

Let me know what your take is on deprioritizing work, if there is a secret to finding a healthy work-life balance and I'm just missing it, or your thoughts on if we need a new type of balance - because life takes some work, too.

If you missed it, last week I talked about my takeaways from a silent retreat and how that translates to creating evergreen content.